PHILADELPHIA
Untethered: The Space Between Being and Abstraction
Curated by Kara Mshinda
May 14 – Jun 20, 2026
Second Thursday Receptions: May 14 & Jun 11, 6 - 9 pm
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia presents Untethered: The Space Between Being and Abstraction, a group exhibition curated by Kara Mshinda on view May 14–June 20, 2026. The exhibition brings together four artists — Alex Smith, LUSMERLIN, DuiJi Mshinda, and Duwenavue Santé Johnson — working across collage, painting, textiles, and installation. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 14, from 6 to 9 p.m.
Untethered positions abstraction as a condition and not a style. In this context, abstraction is the space where desire moves beyond language, where form arrives before meaning, where the unnamed can finally move. This exhibition, which is Mshinda’s curatorial debut, asks what becomes possible when artists world-build without predetermined parameters and follow their raw creative intuition into territory that only reveals itself in the making.
What connects these four artists is a shared commitment to practice as the origin of creativity. From this process, worlds emerge. This attention to method reveals the ways in which their works are artifacts of meaning-making: unscripted, intuitive, and oriented toward possibility rather than resolution.
Untethered is an invitation to dream alongside these four artists. To follow a work where it wants to go. To ask what if — and resist the urge to answer too quickly.
About the Artists
Alex Smith is a Philadelphia-based speculative fiction writer, collage artist, and musician whose work bends the conventions of science fiction, Dadaism, and comic art to frame the creativity, survival, and hopefulness of queer and Black people. He is the founder and curator of Laser Life, a queer sci-fi reading series, and Conflict Minerals, a retro-futurist cross-generational jazz-punk mash-up art jam, and has lectured on the practical application of Afrofuturism and sci-fi and fantasy tropes in art at institutions including Moore College of Art & Design, the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, and Swarthmore College. Smith is also a vocalist, sound artist, and lyricist in free jazz-punk bands Spectral Forces and Glitch Proverbs.
DuiJi Mshinda is a Philadelphia-based visual artist, poet, and DJ whose work explores presence as a practice — sitting with life's challenges while remaining grounded in shared reality. Working in kaleidoscopic digital collage sourced from original drawings, whiteboard creations, photos of nature, and found objects, his process mirrors the beat-chopping recontextualization techniques of music producers. His recent solo exhibition Alignment was presented at International Bar in Philadelphia in January 2026. As co-founder of Vinyl Tap 215, he has held residencies and headlined events at the ICA, The Gathering, Urban Village, International House, and Rex at the Royal, and leads annual Juneteenth programming at Bartram's Garden.
Duwenavue Santé Johnson is a Philadelphia-based textile artist whose practice — rooted in hand embroidery, beading, appliqué, and collage in dialogue with painting, print, and found materials — sits at the intersection of story, craft, and care. Trained across institutions on four continents, including École Lesage and Atelier Zardosi in Paris, the Royal School of Needlework in Surrey, and the Han Sang Soo Embroidery Museum in Seoul, she learned materials first — what they can hold, what they can heal. Her work returns persistently to migration, memory, fracture, and identities that resist easy categorization; her upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn and Radical Americana (2026), a Semiquincentennial collaboration with the Philadelphia Historical Society, The Clay Studio, and Winterthur Museum.
LUSMERLIN is a multidisciplinary artist working between Greater Baltimore and Philadelphia and exhibiting internationally, whose practice weaves together quantum physics, spiritual tradition, and the folklore of her Dominican Taíno, Lebanese, and African heritage. Working in large-scale pastel, acrylic, and paper, she uses color, gesture, and texture to create abstract self-portraits that celebrate women, nature, and the unseen forces that connect them — her body holding both spirit and story. She is a 2026 Baker Finalist, 2025 Janet & Walter Sondheim Semifinalist, a 2024 Mural Arts Philadelphia Fellow, and her work has been presented at El Museo del Barrio, The Peale Museum, and nearly 30 juried exhibitions internationally. Her work and practice have been covered on Hyperallergic, The Baltimore Banner, DC News Now, BmoreArt, and several other outlets.
About the Curator
Kara Mshinda is a Philadelphia-area visual anthropologist, educator, and community arts practitioner whose photo-based practice combines collage and documentary photography to explore identity and memory. She serves as Network Co-Director at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia and Resident Artist at GrioXArts studio at Cherry Street Pier, and teaches “Race, Identity, and Experience in American Art” as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. A 2024 Philadelphia Fellowship for Black Artists recipient from Mural Arts Philadelphia and 2023 Wind Challenge Exhibition Series awardee from Fleisher Art Memorial, her work has been presented at venues in Philadelphia, Berlin, Chicago, and Mexico City. Untethered: The Space Between Being and Abstraction is her debut curatorial project.
photos by Constance Mensh coming soon